Paul Simon: The songwriter teamed with producer Brian Eno on his latest album.

Paul Simon, "Surprise" (Warner Bros., in stores Tuesday) - Where once this master tunesmith was innovatively ahead of the curve, now he's blissfully a few steps behind. Where once he pointed the way into our global-village future via the rhythms of Africa and South America, now he's mining the recent past, infusing spacey ambience and beat-stuttering electronica into his still-folk-jazzy-after-all-these-years approach, regardless that clamor for synthetics subsided about the time he got back to basics with 2000's "You're the One."

What keeps this experiment from failing miserably are two things: Brian Eno and the fragmented power of Simon's singular songwriting.

By enlisting Eno as producer, allowing him to apply streamlined soundscapes to this often-inspired material the way Eno previously did to U2's work, Simon, now 64, once again succeeds at seeming reinvented. Amid traces of "Graceland" strewn here and there (noticeably on "Beautiful"), there is also heavier guitar and much more ominous atmosphere than stalwart fans may expect from this softie. But mostly this sounds like what might have resulted from an Eno-Simon collaboration had such an unusual pairing occurred in '76.

Today, it sounds a bit like a new David Byrne album, or perhaps McCartney's "Chaos and Creation in the Backyard" - which is to say it feels modern and teems with offbeat observation and never follows any trend, the artist preferring to incorporate varied, potentially ill-fitting elements into his own well-established vision. (In the case of "Sure Don't Feel Like Love," that finds Eno adding lurching burble to a Bo Diddley beat and Simon's soulful falsetto.)

The crucial difference Simon's "Surprise" has over any similar forays from contemporaries is that his impressionistic lyrics keep you thinking even after several plays. Ostensibly this sumptuous, slightly drowsy, very often beautiful listen is his family-man album, some extension of the warmth of "You're the One" but with pointed commentary about aging, God, religion vs. spirituality and the wonder of children, particularly adopting ones from torn-apart nations.

Yet this is also his quirkiest, nuttiest, most elliptical work since 1983's unloved "Hearts and Bones," and it contains his most impassioned (if never explicit) plea for peace, the gospel-graced ballad "Wartime Prayers." In other words, it's proof that Simon may stand alone now as the '60s-derived artist most consistently pushing his own envelope. Grade: A-

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